Free Happily Ever Madder: Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee

meetings.” He smiles and then says, “Like picking up dried dog turds. It’s about the same thing, only dog turds don’t stink quite as bad.” Becky punches him in the arm and he straightens up and apologizes to her. I laugh to myself, understanding now why Mason is so fond of Mr. Don Collins.
    I hear a commotion at the front of the room and look up to see Margo bustling in, followed by a tall, thin wisp of man.
    “That’s her sissified husband, Liam,” Don whispers, nodding toward the man, who flits around and somehow manages to drop half of his files in the floor.
    Margo heaves a sigh, props her hand on her hip, and scowls at Liam as he pulls the papers up into a sloppy, disorganized pile.
    “Poor Liam,” I whisper back to Don Collins.
    Liam stacks the papers on the rectangular table, and Margo snatches up the first one, rolls her eyes, and then picks up the second.
    “I’m Margo Kiltzwich, and I officially call this meeting to order!” she barks, and the man seated to my left, who had apparently drifted off, jerks and snorts and sits up in his chair.
    After thirty minutes of listening to her talk about the proper length of grass after trimming and the maximum height allowable before, the board decides to call a vote about a quarter inch of grass. Margo announces that I won’t be voting because I’m living with my fiancé and we aren’t legally married. I smile and nod as if I really appreciate her calling me out like that in front of the whole neighborhood and then I tell her, very nicely, that not voting is fine with me.
    This riles up some of the board members, who obviously aren’t as offended by the whole living-in-sin thing as Margo. They get into a bitter argument about absentee versus proxy voting and I just want to scream that I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about the length of the grass, just please let me go home and get on the couch with my dog. I stand up and attempt to politely excuse myself from the meeting, but I’m promptly told to sit back down. I do, and Mr. Don Collins sniggers, pats me on the back, and tells me it was a good try. One of the board members scowls at me and asks if he saw me at Bueno Burrito last week. I assure him that he did not. The argument splits on itself because half of the people become worried that Mason could file a complaint if he disagrees with the new standards for grass trimmings and the other half argue that Mason forfeits his right to a say by not being at the meeting.
    Some stupid-looking woman named Cindy, whose function is apparently to assist Margo, stands up and gives a long and painfully boring lecture about how I’m considered a visitor and not a legal resident of the community because Mason has not submitted any paperwork to the HOA with my name on it. She turns her smirk on me, and I smile and tell her I don’t have a problem with that at all. This pleases half the board and enrages the other half.
    I try to leave again and Margo asks me where I’m going and I tell her that I’m going home because I’m not a member of the community. She tells me to sit down because after the vote they’ll be moving on to the quarterly review of association rules and then start addressing complaints. I look at Don and he rolls his eyes, and the man on the other side of me is snoring again.
    “Miss Jones,” Margo says, waving a finger at me, “sit back down, please.”
    “Of course,” I say, taking a seat. She looks like King Leonidas after he kicked that guy into the bottomless pit, and I spend the next fifteen minutes fantasizing about beating the creases out of Margo’s starched activewear.
    I sit and fume because I know Margo’s type all too well. People like her will treat cash register clerks and waitresses like they’re human garbage and spread animosity like it’s going out of style, but they don’t drink and they don’t cuss, so they run around acting like they exist on some kind of elevated moral ground. As I sit in my metal folding